Next year it looks like it's all going to be VR/AR glasses in the tech world. We just had Qualcomm make a move in that direction with its Snapdragon Spaces. And now the biggie Apple, which is already working on a special glasses project, may incorporate a feature that is well and truly made for the wearer's eyes only.
According to a report in Patently Apple, the Cupertino-based company has filed a patent with the US Patent & Trademark office for a vision device with the privacy feature that aims to display the content on, say iPhone, to the wearer of the special glasses alone. That is, the content will be visible only if one is wearing the special glass paired with the Apple device.
The report said that the patent, overall, relates to "providing personalized graphical outputs and, in particular, to systems, processes, and methods for displaying vision-corrected graphical outputs and standard graphical outputs on an electronic device."
- Everything we know about the Apple Glasses
- … and the Apple VR headset
- This Apple Glasses leak is the most exciting yet
Will the feature make it to Apple Glasses?
The report added: "A key new dimension discussed in this patent application covers 'Privacy Eyewear.' In some embodiments, a user may interact with the calibration graphic to intentionally blur the graphical output presented on the display of the device (iPhone). If a user desires privacy or doesn’t want a nearby person to view what is presented on the display, the user may interact with the calibration graphic to make the graphical output illegible."
If you cut through the techno mumbo jumbo, basically what it means is, Apple is working on a vision device that brings a sea change to what you and how you see.
Of course, Apple is quite well known for maintaining a thick screen of secrecy around its projects, so we have no official word from it.
But this 'privasee' feature --- to coin a name for it --- could possibly be a part of its glasses project. A previous report on Apple Glasses had talked of a patent for a feature that projects screen directly onto your eyeballs, skipping traditional displays entirely.
The ‘direct retinal projector’ will track where you’re looking so that it can use mirrors to accurately reflect a light field – aka the content that would be displayed on a traditional screen – right into the wearer’s pupils.
The latest patent move seems a logical extension of the previous one.
In general, there has been a lot of speculation around the putative Apple Glasses. The general belief is that it'll be something along the lines of Google Glass – actual glasses with an augmented reality display built into the lenses. But there’s is also a rumour that the initial version of Apple Glasses being more of a headset, like goggles, with sleeker glasses possibly following a few years later.
In addition to the new privacy feature, Apple is also said to be developing personal data for Face ID that can recognise the unique details of a user's face, such as hairstyle, beard, glasses et al.
For the record, all the things that Apple files a patent for may not necessarily make it to its devices.
- Upcoming phone launches in India for November 2021: Specs, launch date, and price
Want to know about the latest happenings in tech? Follow TechRadar India on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
